On Sunday, appearing on Fox News with host Chris Wallace, Republican Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, the number two ranking Republican in the Senate, ripped President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure bill, asserting that only 6% of it is focused on infrastructure. The bill, said Thune, ‘’is a massive expansion of the government.”
“Only about 6% of the president’s proposal actually goes to what the American people – I think everyday Americans – would describe as infrastructure,” said Thune.
“If they are interested in roads, bridges, highways and perhaps broadband, then there is a deal to be had there,” he added. “Infrastructure in the past has always been bipartisan, when it’s confined to infrastructure.”
Newsweek reported on April 2: “The $115 billion set aside for improving roads and bridges is just under 6 percent of the plan’s $2 trillion total in spending and just under 7 percent when the additional $20 billion for investing in road safety programs is factored in. The $115 billion set aside for updating roads and bridges is about 18.5 percent of the $621 billion the plan devotes to transportation infrastructure.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “This plan is not about rebuilding America’s backbone. Less than 6% of this massive proposal goes to roads and bridges. It would spend more money just on electric cars than on America’s roads, bridges, ports, airports, and waterways combined.”
Cato Institute Director of Tax Policy Studies Chris Edwards opined, “The first thing to know is there is no hard definition of infrastructure. Economists have no hard definition of infrastructure.”
On Sunday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg would not rule out the possibility that the Biden administration would find a way to make “dreamers’ citizenship” a part of the $2.3 trillion infrastructure package. Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper, Buttigieg had this exchange with the host:
TAPPER: House progressives are now calling for you to include a path to citizenship for dreamers in the legislation. Again, I understand this is a principle you think is worth fighting for. Is that infrastructure?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, that’s not in the plan that we have put forward. Of course, we need to support dreamers. That’s important as a policy matter in this country. Look, now we’re getting into the season where there’s going to be a lot of push and pull on how things move in different forms in terms of legislative packaging. That’s what this negotiating process will produce.
But the important thing, as the president has repeatedly said, is, we can’t do nothing. We can’t wait any longer. And when it comes to this infrastructure package, the American people are ready to go. We have been ready to go for years and years.
I think this is the third administration to arrive with the American people clamoring for something to happen on infrastructure. And I think, this time, we can get it done.
TAPPER: Are you ruling out including a path to citizenship for dreamers in the transportation bill, the infrastructure bill?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, again, that’s not in the plan that the president’s put forward. I will say that we’re hearing a lot of ideas from across the aisle and from within our caucus on what to do about the pay-fors, different shapes that the infrastructure package and the transportation infrastructure can take. I think you will find the president is ready to listen to these ideas that are going to come up, for example, in tomorrow’s meeting. But we can’t just sit here. I mean, we have got roads and bridges that are deteriorating by the day. We have got America not even in the top 10 when it comes to things like transportation infrastructure, the areas that I work on the most. We have got to get something done.
TAPPER: So, I will interpret that as a — your mind is open as to what else might be in the package.